


Leave My Body

by orphan_account



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Near Death Experiences, One Shot, Pre-Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If demons and the embodiment of Biblical prophecies wasn’t enough to warrant the dismissal of “formal procedures,” then Jenny's positive that being brought back from the brink of death by a woman from her dreams is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave My Body

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of AU since there's no real time frame or logic for it in canon. 
> 
> Honestly, I just saw some really awesome Katrina x Jenny fics floating around so I just wanted to add to the trend. 
> 
> The title is from the Florence + Machine song of the same name.

“Jenny!”

She feels like she’s falling.  She’s not sure from where or how she got there; all she knows is that she’s got no restraints and no destination and she’s plummeting; she’s plummeting quickly.

“Jenny,” Abbie’s voice floats to her ears amidst a crackling dissonance of white noise; a hand squeezes hers but it’s fleeting and she’s pretty sure it’s not because Abbie lets go but because she’s just slipping out of reach.

There’s a brutal breeze chilling right through the hole in her chest. She can’t remember if the two-headed demon had punched a hole straight through skin and tendon or if it had just sucked flesh free from bone and left her.

She can’t remember much of anything at all, except pain and falling —falling to her knees, falling to the ground, falling through time.

She’s still falling.

“Jenny, hold on.” She wants to tell Abbie that there is nothing to grasp on to; the touch of her hand is quickly fading, the gentle wisp of her voice is disappearing just as quickly. She’s falling through worlds—through skylines and clouds and trees and pasts and presents and futures. The images only last seconds; she can’t clutch onto even one of them. “Just stay with me, Jenny. Stay with me, okay?”

She can’t. 

There’s an incessant beeping; it’s rhythmic but rapidly falling into nothingness. _Ritenuto_ —she had piano lessons in a foster home once; ritenuto: a sudden and drastic slowing of tempo.

A gruff voice startles her; there’s panic all over; panic about losing something —about losing _her_.

Abbie is screaming —no; she’s screaming no over and over and over and there’s anguish coating her vocal cords— but it’s Ichabod’s voice that drifts to her next.

“Miss Mills,” she wants to hold onto the sound but it floats away just as quickly; he’s talking to Abbie anyway and she catches something about a capable man and someone doing his job. 

Everything’s just slipping so fast and her chest hurts so badly. She’s not sure if she’ll fall forever; she’s not sure if she’d prefer it over hitting the ground eventually.

“ _CLEAR_.”

Her body jolts in shock and lurches in pain. She desperately attempts to draw a breath of air into her lungs but even that hurts.

She’s still falling.

“Miss Mills.”

Maybe this is it.

“Miss Mills.”

Maybe this is what the ground feels like.

“Miss Mills.”

And suddenly, it stops.

She doesn’t know how or why but she stops falling.  

All of a sudden, she’s being caught and it feels like she’s being pulled into a vacuum— like the hole in her chest is being drawn back to wholeness and she’s being hauled into a comfortable warmth.

“Miss Mills.”

For a moment she thinks she’s back; she thinks it’s Ichabod’s voice she’s hearing again, but it’s not.

It takes only a moment of clarity for her to realize that this voice is soft and lilting —decisively female. 

“Jennifer Mills.”

She blinks her eyes open and sees red. There are images flashing before her—a battlefield, dread and terror, blood, lots of blood; neat hands (small and pale, but neat) drenched in the blood of the wounded.

These are not her memories —they can’t be—but they feel real; they feel concrete in a way that she absolutely doesn’t right now.

“Miss Jennifer Mills.”

She forces herself to focus; she forces a collision of body and mind and when she blinks again, this time there’s still red, but it’s a blanket of it —a cover of red tresses that are cascading over her skin. She smells the soft and sweet incense of burning herbs and remembers spending a month in Guatemala; she remembers how a Xinkan tribe had welcomed her and she remembers the lingering scent of sage and agave as they attempted to ward off subsequent evil following her arrival.  

Jenny can’t see this woman’s face but she’s got a feeling that she’s definitely not from a tribe of Indigenous people. She tries to sit up—to dive away from her captor—but a gentle palm against her chest urges her back down.

She glances at the hand (small and pale but neat). There is no blood, just a hole and gentle fingertips tapping into her skin. It’s like a code, or a pattern, or the most extravagant type of needlework the way the woman’s fingers glide over flesh, zigzagging over this part of her that has been stolen.

It’s like stitches, except there are no needles, there are no markings; it’s just fingertips and warmth as flesh seems to rise anew beneath each brush of the woman’s fingers.  

She’s being healed.   

She suddenly feels like she can breathe again and she can’t breathe all at once.  

“Who are you?” she asks, glancing around and finding herself cushioned by moss and surrounded by a blurred array of trees. She thinks she can even see people—people traveling in circles; people wandering aimlessly (it almost feels like the institution all over again—dreary, hopeless). “Where am I?”

“My name is Katrina,” the woman answers and when she turns to look at her, Jenny is greeted with soft, striking features, a delicate smile and clear blue eyes. (Jenny has seen demons ; she has seen the kinds that rip holes through peoples’ chests and she’s seen the kinds that seize peoples’ minds and drives them to do it themselves. She has swallowed pills that made her feel hollow and tongued ones that were supposed to make her feel whole.  She’s been through a whole lot of shit but she has never felt crazy until this moment right here. Right now, she feels damn right out of her mind.)

“I’ve seen you before,” she mutters —and there are thoughts, there are observations, there are many things she has learned to keep to herself over time, but there is a woman healing her with her bare hands and this feels important. “In a dream,” she acknowledges. (After the appearance of Moloch in her childhood, she was plagued with nightmares— with raw images of demons and destruction. Even before her exile to the institution, everyone had called her crazy and even once she was in the institution, on the worst days, before the loneliness had morphed to rage and the sting of the ultimate betrayal had given way to anger, she felt nothing but hopelessness. When the dreams came on _those_ days, she felt susceptible —susceptible to the clutch of the demons, susceptible to invasive thoughts of death and destruction— but in those dreams, there was always a glimpse of a woman —of a delicate smile, of soft, striking features, of clear blue eyes, of a beacon.)  Jenny would recognize her anywhere.  “I’ve seen you in my dreams.”   

“Yes,” the woman—Katrina—smiles and Jenny can’t tell if the warmth that spreads through her is from the palm, now just resting on her chest, or from the effervescence of that smile.  “I believe it fate that while I could not communicate, I could with no mystical leanings appear to you in your slumber, and you, when destined for a land elsewhere, could be drawn so easily into my grasp.”

The hand on her chest presses down and Jenny feels the roar of her heartbeat in a way she hadn’t felt it before.  

“But you do not belong here, Miss Mills.” The hand that had repaired her chest dashes along skin and comes to rest at the side of her face, cupping her cheek. It’s contact that she’d usually jerk away from, but it’s warmth when just moments ago she was filled with such cold and Katrina is gazing down at her with a soft, sad smile and hopeful eyes. “You must return to your world.”

“My world?” she asks, still not entirely sure where she is right now.

“The Apocalypse is merely delayed, but not stopped; they need you,” Katrina answers and there’s a conviction in her voice but Jenny shakes her head, unconvinced.

“Not me,” she insists. “Abbie. My sister, Abbie. The world needs her. She’s the Witness, not me.”

Katrina chuckles and when her hand trails from Jenny’s face to grasp at her hand, Jenny feels like she’s being lifted—like she’s floating.

“Witness, or no Witness, there is work for you yet, Miss Mills.” The voice is fading—drifting away; the image is fading; this world is fading from her. “There have been many souls cast aside in this spiritual war,” Katrina’s soft cadence drifts through her and she tries to hold onto it as she departs. “There are many lost souls—trapped souls.” There’s explicit implication in her words and Jenny wonders if maybe she was destined for something after all. “Perhaps we’ll meet again, Miss Mills, under less crucial circumstances.”

She comes to with a gasp —it feels as if she has collided into herself with enough force to knock the wind out of her and shove life into her at the same time.

She realizes that she’s in a hospital room.

There’s a machine beeping steadily to her left, counting beats and counting breaths; Abbie’s curled up on a chair to her right and Ichabod is stretched out on two joined chairs to her left (she wonders how long they’ve been here—she wonders how long she hasn’t been here).  

She tries to sit up but she can barely move with the weight of wires. Tugging aggressively at one of the cords, she pulls a needle from her arm and the action seems to set off an alarm that jolts Abbie awake.

“Jenny, what are you—?”   

She pulls the power on the whole machine and for good measures, she removes the batteries too until the sounds stop. 

“Miss Mills?” Ichabod questions, apparently also awoken by the commotion although, if anything, he seems mostly awed by her tenacity.

The hospital robe is loose on her body and she tugs at it, revealing the large bandage spread across her chest.

“Jenny,” her sister warns, but she ignores it and slowly pulls at the corner of the bandage until it rips free and reveals skin—soft, unmarked, unwounded skin.

She hears Abbie’s breath catch and she sees Ichabod glancing at her chest—while making a show of _not_ actually glancing at her chest.

She runs her fingers along the flesh and it’s smooth beneath her fingertips—not a scar, not a scratch, not a blemish; it seems almost impossible.

“Well, it appears as if you have made a miraculous recovery,” Ichabod points out.

Jenny nods, feeling the ferocious thump of her heart beneath her fingers.

“Katrina,” she whispers in acknowledgement, realizing that this was no miracle; this was no dream; this was no figment of her imagination; this woman saved her life.

“Miss Mills,” Ichabod is staring at her strangely. “Did you just say _Katrina_?”  

He and Abbie share a meaningful glance but Jenny has no time for their weird clairvoyant communication; she’s already up and trying to find her clothes.

“There are souls,” she explains as she tugs her jeans from a duffle bag and tugs them on. “ _People_ , innocent people, trapped in these different worlds,” she discards the stupid hospital robe and pulls on a tank top. “There was a woman, Katrina; I think she was trying to tell me that I could free them somehow; that I could free her somehow.”  

Ichabod takes the duffle bag from her fingers, flinging it over his shoulder and nodding.

“Then we must go at once,” he agrees, leading them right out of the hospital room.

“You know there’s a formal AMA discharge procedure, right?” Abbie calls after them, but Jenny ignores it; if demons and the embodiment of Biblical prophecies wasn’t enough to warrant the dismissal of “formal procedures,” then she’s positive that being brought back from the brink of death by a woman from her dreams is.   

They’ve got far more important things to do than worry about a discharge against medical advice.

 


End file.
